2017

I spotted a short item on gender bias in academia in the Economist this week and tweeted it, which then went viral. The tweet read: ‘In academic seminars, ‘Men are > 2.5 times more likely to pose questions to the speakers. This male skew was observable only in those seminars in which a man asked first question. When a woman did so, gender split disappeared’. …

Hats off to World Vision for pulling together some analysis on where large international NGOs (INGOs) have got to on ‘Doing Development Differently’ (see the 2014 manifesto if you’re not up to speed on DDD). Up to now, NGOs have been rather quiet in a discussion dominated by government aid agencies, academics and thinktanks. World Vision asked Dave Algoso to look at examples from 5 …

Longer projects don’t generate better results; women’s economic empowerment doesn’t seem to shift power imbalances in the home. Just two intriguing findings from new ‘metanalyses’ of Oxfam’s work on the ground. Head of Programme Quality, impact evaluation champion and all-round ubergeek Claire Hutchings explains. On this blog in 2011 we first shared our approach to ‘demonstrating effectiveness without bankrupting our NGO.’ A lot has happened …

Last reminder to fill in the FP2P reader survey, which will help with our redesign and plans for next year. Closes 18th December All other rejection letters can step down. We have a winner. Summary of IMF findings on global inequalities: countries with the most health coverage suffer from a lower average life expectancy. Sub Saharan Africa would accrue largest gains by reducing disparities in …

Back from Myanmar today, and still processing an intense week of conversations. Here’s a first instalment. A week in, I was struck by the gulf between the aid bubble and the deep religiosity of people throughout the country. So I dashed off this vlog on a weekend visit to the spectacular Shwedagon Pagoda, in the heart of Yangon. In it I make a few points: …

Guest blog by Itai Mutemeri (@tyclimateguy) is Head of Analytics at London based Senca Research In September 2017, I headed up to the Oxfam head office in Oxford to present our research paper: Big Data Opportunities for Oxfam – Text Analytics. Like all good research titles, it’s a mouthful. The paper explored the potential application of text analytics in response to Oxfam’s call for proposals …

Every year, the ‘rusty radiator’ site runs a poll on the year’s best/worst aid agency ads. Let’s start with the good ones. My favourite has to be War Child’s batman video – very moving The others are a smart Save the Children US take on children and Christmas gifts, a very knowing Below the Line film on aid stereotypes and a human trafficking film that I can’t …

I’m usually no fan of Private Eye, but this is great (click to expand) Open Access books are downloaded seven times more, cited 50% more, and mentioned online ten times more than non OA. Thinking Politically is the easy bit. It’s the Working Politically that is almost impossible. Really good summary of lessons from Lavinia Tyrrel & Graham Teskey Kate Raworth went down a storm …

I do love it when NGOs are taken by surprise in a good way – getting results in unexpected ways, rather than grinding through the plan. A neat example came up at Oxfam’s recent Evidence for Influencing conference. Here’s what happened. Oxfam America and Save the Children wanted to persuade USAID to do more on ‘local ownership’ of aid. It’s a bipartisan issue in the …

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This is a conversational blog written and maintained by Duncan Green, strategic adviser for Oxfam GB and author of ‘From Poverty to Power’. This personal reflection is not intended as a comprehensive statement of Oxfam's agreed policies.